The Third Vice President and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has affirmed that the governments of Spain and Portugal They plan to present a joint proposal to the rest of the European partners to limit the price of the megawatt hour MWh in the wholesale market to €180/MWh.
The maximum price of 180 euros/MWh was a reference that existed in the Spanish and Portuguese regulation until in 2019 a European directive prohibited maintaining caps to the offers of the electricity companies in the wholesale market.
For this reason, in statements to Onda Cero reported by Europa Press, the minister considered that, just two years ago “it seemed crazy that would never and today it is widely surpassed”, it is “little debatable that it should be the maximum limit that we must accept in our market”.
In this scenario, he has insisted that the Government is waiting to take measures until it has the response from the European Commission, something that can be seen as “an opportunity to build more Europe”, although he has indicated that he will give a “national response” to decouple gas from the electricity market if the European Union delays.
What if Europe is “not up to the task”?
“We believe that it is a European decision because the regulation is European, what happens is that the analysis of the economic situation and the need to protect our citizens and industry leads us to consider ourselves as a Government to make decisions to protect the national interest in the event that Europe is not up to the task in the type of measures that are adopted”, has assured.
In this sense, the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge has affirmed that this political analysis has been done.
“We believe that it is capital to build Europe also in the field of energy, but if the European Union is delayed we will have to give a response, even if it is on a strictly national basis, because society cannot wait”, pointed out the minister, who specified that said response would have to be arranged with Portugal because it is a single electrical market.
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The third vice president has insisted, however, that the government is working on a European response, for what he has considered “capital” that in the European Council of March 24 and 25 there is not only an orientation, but also some decisions “as operative, immediate and effective as possible”.
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💡📉 The Government announces on Onda Cero that it will propose capping the price of electricity at 180 euros per megawatthttps://t.co/Z3vejDfp3p
– Onda Cero (@OndaCero_es) March 17, 2022
“If it is more audacious or conservative, it gives us the guideline of how much more we have to do and in what energy fields in the national response,” has pointed out.